


A Lot Like Trust

by clandestinegardenias



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: DEREK HALE HAS TRUST ISSUES, M/M, also oh my gosh all the metaphors just, yep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clandestinegardenias/pseuds/clandestinegardenias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a complete and total surprise when Derek thinks, for just a split second, that maybe he could trust Stiles. He’s already proven to himself, in tiny, soft, and quiet moments that the capacity is still there, small and broken in the very pit of him. It’s shards of iron, bitter and hard and burning him from the inside out, and Stiles is a magnet that pulls them to the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lot Like Trust

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this...awhile ago. Well before Season 3, which means that some stuff might no longer be accurate. Reposted from Tumblr and my first post of AO3! JOY OF JOYS.

It’s no secret that Derek has trust issues; he realizes this, really he does. It’s something that he knows, intuitively, on cold nights when he sleeps outside in the woods and starts up at the stars; he can smell it in the smoke from a campfire, hear it in the laughter of the teenagers roasting marshmallows and getting drunk. It’s something he should really work on.

But he doesn’t want to work on it.

Derek used to be trusting, stupidly so. He was the kind of kid you could get to look up to see ‘gullible’ written on the ceiling time and again with a simple ‘no really this time!’. His sisters used to tease him about it constantly. It made him wish that he could stop trusting people, but it was something he just couldn’t help. It was instinctive. 

He learned to laugh about it, to laugh at himself when his mom managed to convince him that he didn’t officially have a middle name on his birth certificate and they just made one up to appease him. It didn’t hurt to be tricked; it made his family laugh, it made them happy. He actually got to the point where he enjoyed it, where he was really laughing with them and not just faking through it while he worried about them thinking he was stupid.

So of course he trusted Kate. He couldn’t imagine not trusting her, didn’t have a suspicious bone in his body. He knew, logically, that people were dangerous, particularly for a family like his. He knew that people would use his faith in them to tease him, but he never suspected that the prodding could be turned into a slow, agonizing slide of cold steel straight to the heart. He could never find it in him to reject people without giving them a chance. So when Kate leaned in to kiss him, whispered ‘just trust me’ through candy colored lips, he did. He let her kiss him, and then she turned around and soaked him in gasoline, threw the match, and watched his life and everything he used to be go up in ashes.

In the fall he can still taste her in the burning leaves.

He still trusted people after that, but it was never the same. He’d learned his lesson in blood and bone-shredding terror, a regret and an ache so deep that sometimes his teeth still ache with it and he has to clench his jaw to drown out the bitterness.

He trusted Laura though.

She was what he had left, and when he sat across from her at their tiny, scratched up dinner table and she laughed with her head thrown back and her hair sticking to her face, he could promise himself that she would never leave him. He even managed to believe it. But she did; she left him just like everyone else. It wasn’t her fault, but it destroyed that last shred of ability to have faith in someone, because even if they have the best intentions in the world they can still break you. And the majority of people don’t have the best intentions in the first place. 

So he lives alone in the shell of what he used to be, until he starts to make a pack and relocates to someone else’s failure. Somehow it hurts a little less.

And don’t get him wrong, Isaac, Erica, and Boyd are pack. They are his, and he is theirs. But that doesn’t mean he trusts them. They’re young, volatile, and when they’re beating him bloody on the full moon it comes to him that maybe that’s why he chose them in the first place; if you know you can’t trust them from the start then you won’t be faced with the inevitable temptation.

On occasion, when he’s exhausted and on the verge of sleep, he can even admit to himself that he hopes…someday…

But then again morning always comes, and the sun reaching its fingers through the dusk looks an awful lot like fire.

Still, it’s not a complete and total surprise when Derek thinks, for just a split second, that maybe he could trust Stiles. He’s already proven to himself, in tiny, soft, and quiet moments that the capacity is still there, small and broken in the very pit of him. It’s shards of iron, bitter and hard and burning him from the inside out, and Stiles is a magnet that pulls them to the surface. It’s not a comfortable feeling.

Nor does it make any kind of sense. Stiles is with Scott, and Scott is most certainly not to be trusted, not with that Argent girl on his breath and deep in the color of his eyes.

But for the first time in a very, very long time Derek can’t help himself.

He finds himself trusting Stiles’ opinions, his research, his instincts, without even thinking about it. He trusts his smile, when it’s real, trusts the bow of his mouth and the scrunch of his nose and the ways his eyes light up. It’s terrifying, it’s excruciating.

It’s exhilarating.

He tells himself he doesn’t trust Stiles, doesn’t see a flash of golden brown in the undergrowth in the woods and immediately feel a little more at peace. He tells Stiles he doesn’t trust him, too, but it just ends up sounding like he’s trying to convince himself. Like he doesn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth. When he says them to the cold night air they refuse to mist and freeze, don’t have the necessary substance to turn them visible. It’s becoming a problem.

He’d be an idiot if the situation didn’t remind him of Kate. The ages are reversed, and he’s pretty sure at this point that Stiles isn’t going to burn his family alive, only in part because he no longer has one to burn, but the crux of the situation remains the same.

Because just like with Kate, he can’t help it. He’s drawn in by Stiles’ exuberance, his unmitigated joy and uncontainable energy, but also by the kind of bone deep grief that can only be recognized by itself, the hurt behind the shield, and the fact that there is a shield in the first place. Derek is attracted to his vibrancy and the world of grey that lurks behind it, to the truth of the way his face lights up like the sun and how it’s not a contradiction to the way he sometimes smells like salt and tears when he shows up to pack meetings in the morning. Maybe his mom was a morning person.

It’s thoughts like these that Derek shouldn’t be having.

But he does. And it beats against him, unstoppable, a hurricane that lashes at him and chills him to the bone, but at the same time the rain feels a little like redemption, like something he’s wanted so viscerally and strongly that it became a part of him he didn’t even recognize, couldn’t separate from himself enough to see. He’s always been gullible.

X

He’s sitting at the Stilinski’s kitchen table surrounded by topographical maps and an astonishing rainbow of highlighters when Stiles throws himself into the other chair with a graceless kind of elegance and offers him a BLT sandwich. Derek’s never been a huge fan, and says so.

Stiles smiles at him, and there’s softness in his eyes, a little crinkling at the corners, and his smile isn’t quite as wide as it is when he’s faking it. “Aw, come on, it’s good. I made it! Just trust me on this one”. And then he freezes, realizing what he’s said, because Stiles knows about Derek, knows about his issues with trust, and Derek can watch the gentleness seep out of the corners of his mouth, sees a tiny bit of grey at the center of his eyes. So he gives the sandwich his best ‘bitch please’ face, knows that it will make Stiles laugh, will break the thin layer of ice forming between them and get them back to a few seconds ago.

It works. Stiles breaks into a full smile, throws his head back and lets himself laugh, out of control and real, and his hair isn’t long enough to stick to his face, and the table isn’t old and wood and scars, but it’s enough. It’s enough.

Derek gets up from his chair so fast it wobbles and tips and almost falls over, and he’s got his hands on Stiles’ shoulders before it settles back on all four legs. Stiles still has his head tipped back, and the smile on his face is still honest, if smaller, getting smaller still when he takes in the steel in Derek’s eyes. Sees what must look like terror because it feels an awful lot like dread. Stiles’ smile is replaced with concern, with empathy, and Derek can’t help it, he trusts him. Hell, when Stiles looks at him like that he almost trusts himself.

It’s close enough that he can lean down and seal their mouths together, and it tastes just a little like the Miracle Whip Stiles licked off his fingers making their sandwiches. It’s a strange thought, that for the rest of his life trust will taste like Miracle Whip, but Stiles is breathing in sharply through his nose, clambering out of his chair and into Derek’s arms, tongue tracing the seal of his lips and being allowed to enter, wet and hot and just a little bit desperate, because he thinks he knows that Derek doesn’t trust either of them to do this, thinks that this will be his one and only chance.

Derek shouldn’t be surprised that Stiles kisses like he lives, passionate and deep, joy on the surface intermingled with the sorrow of loss, the threat of losing again.

He’s wrong, for once in his life he’s wrong, and Derek breaks the kiss to shudder in a breath and pull Stiles closer, a hand on the small of his back to press him in, seal him against his wounds like a bandage. He can feel Stiles smile against his shoulder. He raises his head, looks up at Derek, and in that one moment is the perfection of understanding, of knowing exactly how someone feels because you feel that way yourself. It’s like coming home.

Derek smiles, a true smile, and it’s worth it to see the way Stiles’ face lights up, like the sun, but this looks nothing like fire. Stiles kisses him this time, joyous, timid, like he knows but still thinks he might be told to stop, so Derek grins into the kiss just to feel him grin back, licks into his mouth and it tastes a little tangy, a little sweet, and a lot like trust.


End file.
